In company with Brother Fairbanks, with whom I was traveling, I visited some of his relatives and stayed a while in the State of New Jersey. From here we took a trip into the northern part of New York State, where we remained some time, and then returned to New Jersey. During our absence the following incident occurred:
Near what is called Pompton Plains, New Jersey, a family, consisting of parents and three children, lived near the edge of a patch of timber land. One evening in the latter part of December, the two elder children, aged respectively nine and five years, went to a hickory tree about half a mile from the house to gather nuts, contrary to the bidding of their mother, who had charged them strictly not to go. Before the mother had time to go after them, night came on, and, to make matters worse, it commenced raining. She called loudly for them, but no answer was received from the little truants. The night grew pitchy dark and the mother's anxiety increased. What was she to do? Her husband not yet returned from his work, no houses near or help at hand and she alone with her young babe, not daring to leave it to go and search the missing ones. As she waited and looked in vain for their return her anxiety became almost unbearable and she started out with her child in her arms, but the rain drove her back. Soon afterwards her husband returned, and the hurried story of his children's absence needed no repeating to rouse him to action. He started immediately in search of them. He went to the hickory tree, but no children were there. He called aloud, but was answered only by the wind whistling through the trees. After satisfying himself that they were not in that vicinity he returned home, fondly hoping that the little ones had, by this time, reached there. But in this he was disappointed. The wind had now set in pretty strongly and the air was keen with frost.
What to do now was the question, for it was certain the children were lost, and, being thinly clad, if they were not soon found they must certainly perish. The father ran to the nearest neighbors, a distance of half a mile, and gave the alarm. As soon as possible a company of fifteen or twenty men and boys were collected to assist in the search. But, by this time, it was nearly midnight, and no tidings had been heard of the little wanderers.
Their arrangements for searching were hurriedly made. They divided into squads and went in different directions, calling loudly as they went and searching every place where they could imagine the children would have strayed, and thus the search was continued all night till the men were almost tired out and frozen. Morning dawned upon that desolate cottage—a cold and cheerless morning to its inmates, for no relief had yet come to the anxious parents. Another call was made upon the people to continue looking for them, and they turned out and scoured the country, but in vain, for not a sign of the missing children could be found. Thus the second night passed. As the news of the loss spread through the district additional interest and anxiety were awakened, and the sympathetic neighbors turned out in force to aid the bereaved parents in seeking the lost ones. As the time passed the hope of finding them alive died out, but the efforts did not cease. About four miles from the house there were large iron works that employed about three hundred men, and on the third day these workmen turned out en masse and increased, by their number, the force engaged in the search.They organized and examined, as they thought, every foot of land in the vicinity, but with the same discouraging result.
A number of Spiritualists resided in the neighborhood, also some "fortune-tellers;" and they were applied to to divine, if possible, where the children were. They pretended to do so, but their stories conflicted fearfully and all conjectures failed. It was finally suggested that they had been kidnapped. A couple of "Mormon" Elders, it was said, had been in that vicinity and they were suspected of having spirited them away and sent them to Salt Lake. This was only one among a great many reports circulated against the Latter-day Saints, all of which gained ready credence. A reward of three hundred dollars was offered for the recovery of the children; and a great many, stimulated by a desire to gain the reward, spent days in searching them.
Thus matters went on for about three weeks, towards the last the search being prosecuted at intervals only; when one Sunday two or three neighbors decided upon going over the ground once more, with a faint hope of finding them. About three quarters of a mile from the house they noticed a number of crows flying around in the air and hopping upon the tree tops, a short distance from them. Though they paid little attention to the crows at first, when they approached nearer to them they noticed, by the peculiar actions of the birds, that there was some unusual attraction for them in the vicinity. Near by was a high ledge of rocks, under which they saw some of the crows fly. They made their way under this ledge to where the crows seemed to be busy, when, to their horror, they discovered the remains of the missing little ones, but so disfigured as hardly to be recognizable. They had wandered there to find shelter, and there perished. The elder of the two had manifested a noble disposition in the hour of their extremity, for it appeared that he had taken off his little coat and tenderly covered it over his little sister to protect her from the cold. Much of their flesh had been eaten off by the crows when found, but their remains were carefully taken to their sorrowful, heart-broken parents.
The next day there was a funeral at the Methodist church, near by, attended by the old and young of the entire neighborhood, assembled to see conveyed to their last resting-place the bodies of the children whose loss they all felt so keenly. No language can describe the feelings of those bereaved parents. Their sorrow was too deep for words to express.
We visited the place a short time afterwards, saw the cliff under which the children died, and learned how the final recovery of their bodies had relieved us of the imputation of having kidnapped them.
There is a lesson which every child may learn from this sad narrative: the necessity of obedience to parents. In obedience only is their safety. Though those grief-stricken parents forgave, in their hearts, the little act of disobedience which robbed them of their loved ones, it was none the less true that had they been obedient, as they ought, to their mother, they would not thus have met their fate.